- RT @ramseyshow: RT @E_C_S_T_E_R_I_: "Stupid has a gravitational pull." -D Ramsey as heard n NPR. I know many who have not escaped its orbit. #
- @BudgetsAreSexy KISS is playing the MINUTE state fair in August. in reply to BudgetsAreSexy #
- 3 year old is "reading" to her sister: Goldilocks, complete with the voices I use. #
- RT @marcandangel: 40 Useful Sites To Learn New Skills http://bit.ly/b1tseW #
- Babies bounce! https://liverealnow.net/hKmc #
- While trying to pay for dinner recently, I was asked if other businesses accepted my $2 bills. #
- Lol RT @zappos: Art. on front page of USA Today is titled "Twitter Power". I diligently read the first 140 characters. http://bit.ly/9csCIG #
- Sweet! I am the number 1 hit on Ask.com for "I hate birthday parties" #
- RT @FinEngr: Money Hackers Carnival #117 Wedding & Marriage Edition http://bit.ly/cTO4FU #
- Nobody, but nobody walks sexy wearing flipflops. #
- @MonroeOnABudget Sandals are ok. Flipflops ruin a good sway. 🙂 in reply to MonroeOnABudget #
- RT @untemplater: RT @zappos: "Do one thing every day that scares you." -Eleanor Roosevelt #
The Magic Toilet
- Image by tokyofortwo via Flickr
My toilet is saving me $1200.
For a long time, my toilet ran. It was a nearly steady stream of money slipping down the drain. I knew that replacing the flapper was a quick job, but it was easy to ignore. If I wasn’t in the bathroom, I couldn’t hear it. If I was in the bathroom, I was otherwise occupied.
When I finally got sick of it, I started researching how to fix a running toilet because I had never done it before. I found the HydroRight Dual-Flush Converter. It’s the magical push-button, two-stage flusher. Yes, science fiction has taken over my bathroom. Or at least my toilet.
I bought the dual-flush converter, which replaces the flusher and the flapper. It has two buttons, which each use different amounts of water, depending on what you need it to do. I’m sure there’s a poop joke in there somewhere, but I’m pretending to have too much class to make it.
I also bought the matching fill valve. This lets you set how much water is allowed into the tank much better than just putting a brick in the tank. It’s a much faster fill and has a pressure nozzle that lies on the bottom of the tank. Every time you flush, it cleans the inside of the tank. Before I put it in, it had been at least 5 years since I had opened the tank. It was black. Two weeks later, it was white again. I wouldn’t want to eat off of it, or drink the water, but it was a definite improvement.
Installation would have been easier if the calcium buildup hadn’t welded the flush handle to the tank. That’s what reciprocating saws are for, though. That, and scaring my wife with the idea of replacing the toilet. Once the handle was off, it took 15 minutes to install.
“Wow”, you say? “Where’s the $1200”, you say? We’ve had this setup, which cost $35.42, since June 8th, 2010. It’s now September. That’s summer. We’ve watered both the lawn and the garden and our quarterly water bill has gone down $30, almost paying for the poo-gadget already. $30 X 4 = $120 per year, or $1200 over 10 years.
Yes, it will take a decade, but my toilet is saving me $1200.
How to Prioritize Your Spending
Don’t buy that.
At least take a few moments to decide if it’s really worth buying.
Too often, people go on auto-pilot and buy whatever catches their attention for a few moments. The end-caps at the store? Oh, boy, that’s impossible to resist. Everybody needs a 1000 pack of ShamWow’s, right? Who could live without a extra pair of kevlar boxer shorts?
Before you put the new tchotke in your cart, ask yourself some questions to see if it’s worth getting.
1. Is it a need or a want? Is this something you could live without? Some things are necessary. Soap, shampoo, and food are essentials. You have to buy those. Other things, like movies, most of the clothes people buy, or electronic gadgets are almost always optional. If you don’t need it, it may be a good idea to leave it in the store.
2. Does it serve a purpose? I bought a vase once that I thought was pretty and could hold candy or something, but it’s done nothing but collect dust in the meantime. It’s purpose is nothing more than hiding part of a flat surface. Useless.
3. Will you actually use it? A few years ago, my wife an cleaned out her mother’s house. She’s a hoarder. We found at least 50 shopping bags full of clothes with the tags still attached. I know, you’re thinking that you’d never do that, because you’re not a hoarder, but people do it all the time. Have you ever bought a book that you haven’t gotten around to reading, or a movie that went on the shelf, still wrapped in plastic? Do you own a treadmill that’s only being used to hang clothes, or a home liposuction machine that is not being used to make soap?
3. Is it a fad? Beanie babies, iPads, BetaMax, and bike helmets. All garbage that takes the world by storm for a few years then fades, leaving the distributors rich and the customers embarrassed.
4. Is it something you’re considering just to keep up with the Joneses? If you’re only buying it to compete with your neighbors, don’t buy it. You don’t need a Lexus, a Rolex, or that replacement kidney. Just put it back on the shelf and go home with your money. Chances are, your neighbors are only buying stuff so they can compete with you. It’s a vicious cycle. Break it.
5. Do you really, really want it? Sometimes, no matter how worthless something might be, whether it’s a fad, or a dust-collecting knick-knack, or an outfit you’ll never wear, you just want it more than you want your next breath of air. That’s ok. A bit disturbing, but ok. If you are meeting all of your other needs, it’s fine to indulge yourself on occasion.
How do you prioritize spending if you’re thinking about buying something questionable?
Identity Theft: What To Do When You’ve Been Victimized
Credit Card Theft” width=”240″ height=”189″ />Have you ever been surprised by having a credit application denied? Or been told that you’re paying too much for your car insurance because you have bad credit?
There are 15 million victims of identity each year with an estimated loss of $50 billion. That’s a lot of cake. If you’re credit card gets stolen, you’re only liable for up to $50 of the theft, but what if your checking account is cracked or someone is opening accounts in your name? What is the indirect cost coming form higher interest rates?
Identity theft happens. It could happen to you.
What should you do if you become a victim of identity theft?
- File a police report. You’ve been victimized, make sure you have some documentation of that.
- Contact any credit card company that has possibly been affected. If you lost your wallet, call them all. If somebody has opening cards in your name, call all of those.
- Call the credit bureaus* and have a fraud alert put on your credit report. This will force any new creditor to take extra steps to verify your identity before opening a new account. Ideally, your identity thief won’t be able to make the grade. If that isn’t enough, look into an identity freeze. That will stop a lender from even seeing your credit report without your explicit permission.
- Close your bank accounts Depending on how severe the theft, you may need all new accounts at every level. If the thief has a box of your checks, or even your account and routing numbers, you need to close the accounts to protect your money.
- Report the theft to the FTC at 877.438.4338. You’ll get additional documentation of the theft, including an ID Theft Affidavit that can make it easier to clean up the mess.
- Hire a witchdoctor to curse the soul of your attacker. No, he probably won’t actually turn into a warty toad, but what if? Maybe the universe will wield the Magic Karma Hammer and beat him into a little greasy stain in the street.
The important thing to remember is to hurry. The longer you wait, the more damage will be done and the harder it will be to straighten out. As soon as you find out about the theft, start fixing it.
Have you had your identity stolen? How did you deal with it?
Time Management
My wife told me that I don’t do enough around the house.
She is, of course, correct.
I could make a list of excuses, but none of them matter. There’s really only one reason: I have problems with time management. I’m easily distracted.
For example, in the time it’s taken me to write the above three lines, I stopped to check a website, updated my Evernote installation, and added a new contact to my address book.
That’s not multi-tasking, that’s inefficiency. People don’t actually multi-task. Instead, they break concentration and completely switch gears. Repeatedly. They pretend they are doing a lot of things at once, when in fact they are doing a large series of individual tasks. That’s serial single-tasking, poorly.
On top of that, I focus to the point of obsession. The entire world goes away when I am working.
No, that’s not a contradiction. I’m good at procrastinating and I am interested in everything. If a random thought floats to the surface while I’m working, I follow it to Google and, if it’s interesting enough, I get lost. It generally only happens during research or while doing a job I hate.
For those of you following along at home, I can be easily distracted from some tasks, then lock on to some tangent and have an evening disappear.
For some reason, my wife hates that, especially when there are dishes to be done and laundry to be folded.
This has blown up on me a few time.
We’ve come upon a solution, in three parts.
1. Timer. When I get on the computer, I set an egg timer for 1 hour. When the time’s up, I’m done. The time limit helps me focus on finishing the task at hand. If I know I need to get a post written in an hour, I’m less likely to catch up on the comics in my news reader.
2. Communication. If I’m working on something that I know will take more than an hour, I tell her. I’ve had to do that for each installment of the Make Extra Money series.
3. Nagging. If #1 has failed and #2 doesn’t apply, I’ve given my wife explicit permission to remind me, as often as necessary. Sometimes, I don’t register everything people say when I am “lost”, so now she knows to keep trying if I don’t respond, or respond with a spaced-out “Uh-huh, yes, dear.” Before, she was worried about upsetting me by nagging, but I wouldn’t have noticed the first few times. Thankfully, with #1 and #2, #3 has only been an issue one.
Time limits, communication, and persistent reminders. That’s my plan to manage my time. Getting off of the computer has helped me be more useful with household chores and it’s given me a chance to be closer to the woman I love most. The time-limited focus has even helped me get a couple of projects rolling.
We all have the same 24 hours. Are you using yours efficiently?
(P.S. Happy anniversary, honey. These have been the best years I could ask for.)
The Obligatory Thanksgiving Post
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Tomorrow is also Thursday, and I don’t post on Thursdays, so I’ll be posting about Thanksgiving today.
Thanksgiving is a day to be thankful for–first and foremost–capitalism.
When the Pilgrims first landed, they set up a communal farming arrangement, figuring that a good Christian community could take care of its own. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, and all that. Everyone worked for the good of everyone else, so everyone benefited, right?
The Pilgrims, like every other group that has ever advocated communism, neglected to consider human nature. If you have no incentive to work, you don’t. If sleeping in and making babies still gets you fed and clothed, why work?
On the other side, if you work hard, only to see your hard work go to benefit your lazy neighbor, sleeping in and rattling the headboard, but never doing anything productive, why bother?
It didn’t take long for the Pilgrims to notice this tragedy of government wasn’t working.
The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails and cloaths, then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was thought injuestice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalised in labours, and victails, cloaths, etc., with the meaner and yonger sorte, thought it some indignite and disrespect unto them. And for mens wives to be commanded to doe servise for other men, as dresing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemd it a kind of slaverie, neither could many husbands well brooke it. Upon the poynte all being to have alike, and all to doe alike, they thought them selves in the like condition, and ove as good as another; and so, if it did not cut of those relations that God hath set amongest men, yet it did at least much diminish and take of the mutuall respects that should be preserved amongst them.
It didn’t take long before nobody was working. Neighbors resented each other, because everyone had a right to the work of the other, with no need to compensate each other. That’s a case of “I’m starving because you aren’t working hard enough, but it’s not my fault you’re starving.”
At one point, the production of the colony was down so much that the colonists’ ration of corn was just 4 kernels per day. That’s how you kill a colony.
But they learned from their mistakes before they all died.
Yet notwithstanding all those reasons, which were not mine, but other mens wiser then my selfe, without answer to any one of them, here cometh over many quirimonies, and complaints against me, of lording it over my brethern, and making conditions fitter for theeves and bondslaves then honest men, and that of my owne head I did what I list. And at last a paper of reasons, framed against that clause in the conditions, which as they were delivered me open, so my answer is open to you all. And first, as they are no other but inconvenientes, such as a man might frame 20. as great on the other side, and yet prove nor disprove nothing by them, so they misse and mistake both the very ground of the article and nature of the project. For, first, it is said, that if ther had been no divission of houses and Lands, it had been better for the poore. True, and that showeth the inequalitie of the condition; we should more respecte him that ventureth both his money and his person, then him that ventureth but his person only.
The slavery of working for the benefit of others didn’t work, unless you were “theeves and bondslaves”. Then, it was great, living off of the sweat of others.
To make a long story short, the starvation ended when the Pilgrims were given parcels of land and told they could keep what they built from it. They went from the edge of extinction to being prosperous in a short time. The old and weak were cared for, not by the governor’s decree, but by the generosity of their neighbors.
Everybody in the colony won.
